Few things are more revealing about modern civilizations, of the last centuries, than the books in which the culture and thought of those men are stored, a quality that, obviously, is carried over to the largest libraries in history.
Indeed, although today we have some that are not only claims of lovers of reading, but even tourist, the truth is that this time we are going to stop at others, in many of the largest libraries in history that disappeared for various circumstances.
Herculaneum’s semi-destroyed library
It is one of the oldest of all time, as such, although in reality we are talking about a series of papyri that survived the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. C. , when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried several meters under the deadly ashes.
However, in a private residence in Herculaneum, science found some manuscripts that were really well preserved, although they have not yet been fully deciphered.
Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible
Legend has it that the credit for the lost Library of Ivan the Terrible was actually held by his grandfather, Ivan III, who had married Sophia Paleologue, niece of the last Byzantine emperor, taking books from the Libraries of Alexandria and Constantinople.
The secret passage of Mont Sainte-Odile
The secret passage of Mont Sainte-Odile is not only a renowned library but also one of the great mysteries of humanity in recent decades, to the extent that many of its documents began to be stolen without anyone knowing what was happening.
After a while, it was discovered that there was a secret passage, and that Stanislas Gosse had been using it to get to the library, and steal part of his heritage.
Himmler’s witchcraft
The head of the fearsome SS of the Nazi regime was a lover of the occult, and visits and tours of the National Library in Prague are common, where you can see many of the books that made up the personal collection of witchcraft of the German hierarch, right-hand man of Hitler
Library of Alexandria
However, probably no other disappeared library has reached the fame of that of Alexandria , created a few years after the founding of the same city by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, and which was intended to be a “universal compilation”, eventually with all the relevant works that the human being knew until then.
Of course, no traces remain of it, and many wonder if it disappeared as a result of a fire, something frequent at the time, or in the hands of conquerors, Christians or Muslims.
